“Full-scale Israeli war on multiple fronts highly likely to occur"
Expert views on Caliber.Az

INTERVIEWS  09 April 2023 - 16:15

The north of Israel has come under rocket fire from Lebanon. Locals report that this was the heaviest rocket attack on the north since the last Lebanon war. A direct hit on a residential building was recorded. There are already responses and quite powerful ones at that.

That is, massive strikes have been launched against targets in Lebanon and beyond, foreign media reported. The Iron Dome anti-aircraft missile system is intercepting targets in northern Israel. The airbases have been put on alert. Planes are on standby for strikes on Lebanese territory.

The rocket attack on Israel from Lebanese territory coincided with a visit to Beirut by Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Palestinian Hamas Political Bureau. According to unconfirmed reports, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah group was specifically responsible for the shelling, but it has not claimed to be involved. Moreover, UNIFIL [UN Interim Force in Lebanon] peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon have been ordered to take shelter in anticipation of a possible Israeli air strike. A full-scale Israeli war on multiple fronts is highly likely to occur.

The developments are very worrying. What does all this mean? Could Israel and Lebanon start a real armed conflict? A war again?

Foreign commentators answered these questions for Caliber.Az.

Israeli publicist Alexander Nepomniaschy points out that Iran's leaders, who are very close to obtaining their own nuclear weapons, are well aware that the only force that can stop them today is Israel. At the same time, Tehran is clearly encouraged, if not by direct support, at least by Chinese diplomatic patronage, as well as by the Biden administration's policy of actively seeking to appease the Iranian regime at the expense of Israeli interests.

"In this situation, the most promising, from Tehran's viewpoint, seems to be the involvement of Israel in a regional conflict that would prevent the Jewish state from taking the steps necessary to contain Iranian nuclear efforts. The Iranians blame radical groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah for fuelling the conflict. The rocket attacks on Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, as well as the new upsurge of terror by radical Arab groups, must be a direct consequence of Iranian instructions to set the region on fire," the analyst says.

According to him, the previous Israeli government of Lapid-Bennett, which was subject to instructions from the Biden administration, strengthened Hezbollah by effectively placing sovereign maritime territory in northern Israel and a multi-billion-dollar gas field on the coastal shelf under its control, without any benefit to its own state.

"This and other equally unsuccessful moves by the leaders of the former Israeli government, along with the street hooliganism and violence that, having already gone into opposition, they instigated in recent months, have seriously undermined Israel's deterrent. And it seems to have allowed Tehran and its satellites to assume that Israel is sufficiently weakened and unable to respond to increasing threats," the publicist says.

He said the current Netanyahu government has to return the deterrent while managing to extinguish the conflict without letting it blow up in the region - which is what Tehran wants indeed.

"This requires Netanyahu and his security cabinet to take thoughtful, measured and very precise forceful action. Given that Netanyahu has succeeded in similar tasks more than once in the past, it is hoped that he will be able to do so again. But the risk of a full-scale Israeli war on several fronts, which would involve fighting in Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, quelling terror and violence in Judea and Samaria as well as in cities with a mixed Jewish-Arab population, and confronting Iran at the same time, is higher than ever.

It can be assumed that the coming days will be critical in this regard, Nepomniashchy said.

For his part, an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) officer and war correspondent Yigal Levin said that war is when there is no state of peace.

“Let me remind you that there is no state of peace between Iran and Israel, i.e. there is intermittent fighting. So, we are talking about an escalation, an aggravation of the conflict. There has been no peace between the two countries, unfortunately (as there hasn't been for a long time in the Middle East).

Quite predictably, should the Israeli senior leadership decide to strike, this could include targets not only in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip but also in Syria.

And one has to understand that Hezbollah knows about all the infrastructure, military and other facilities in Lebanon. It couldn't be unaware of Hamas units deploying missiles, moving around and so on. It is aware of all the logistics.

We are all well aware that military logistics are costly, it's money, it's a big movement of cargo. In other words, it is something that cannot go unnoticed. And so the responsibility of Hezbollah, which is the mastermind of southern Lebanon, is certainly present. Although we can see that they are really trying to distance themselves, that they have nothing to do with it.

And what consequences the current escalation will have, I think we will see in the next few days," Levin concluded.

Caliber.Az